Imagination, Perception and Memory. Making (some) sense of Walton’s view on Photographs and Depiction.

Abstract

Walton has controversially claimed (a) that all pictures (including photographs) are fiction because, in seeing a picture one imagines that one is seeing the depicted content in the flesh; and (b) that in seeing a photograph one literally – although indirectly – sees the photographed object. Philosophers have found these claims implausible for various reasons: (1) it is not the case that all pictures are fiction; (2) explaining depiction does not require an imaginative engagement and (3) seeing objects in photographs is not tantamount to seeing the object. I agree with Walton’s critics in all of these claims. However, I try to give some plausibility to Walton’s view. Firstly, I claim that (1) is a misunderstanding. Second, I try to clarify (but not defend) Walton’s view of depiction by contrasting pictorial experience with perceptual experience more generally. Finally, I focus on the case of photographs and I l claim that although Walton is not right in claiming that seeing objects in photographs is a case of literally perceiving the objects, photographs share an important feature with perceptual experience: the content of photographs, like the content of pictorial experience, is particular in character, and that explains their peculiar phenomenology. I content, however, that the experience of photographs is closer to memory than to perception.